do keen and improved critical stack?

[Mystic Muse]

just read the title.

[Twilight Jack]

They used to. . .

[AstralFire]

3.0 yes, 3.5 no. It's not for a (statistical average) balance reason, just a general fear of spike melee damage the revisers had for some reason.

[Frosty]

3.0 yes, 3.5 no. It's not for a (statistical average) balance reason, just a general fear of spike melee damage the revisers had for some reason.

So they were afraid of a Keen Rapier but they were ok with Astral Projection?

[AstralFire]

So they were afraid of a Keen Rapier but they were ok with Astral Projection?

We are talking about the same people who decided that druids needed to be able to spontaneously convert spells in the edition upgrade. Why are you questioning me?:smallfrown:

[Mongoose87]

They were probably worried about melee classes being too strong at high levels.


...



...


:smallfrown:

[tyckspoon]

So they were afraid of a Keen Rapier but they were ok with Astral Projection?

We're also talking about the same people who thought the Half-Orc's +2 Strength justified getting worse than nothing for other racial features.

[Thurbane]

We're also talking about the same people who thought the Half-Orc's +2 Strength justified getting worse than nothing for other racial features.
That's always bugged the crap outta me - especially compared to races like Neanderthal (Fr) and Skarn (MoI), who also get +2 STR... :smallfurious:

[Frosty]

We're also talking about the same people who thought the Half-Orc's +2 Strength justified getting worse than nothing for other racial features.
Well, Darkvision is nice...but...look at all the OTHER goodies Dwarves get in addition to that right? :smalltongue:


We are talking about the same people who decided that druids needed to be able to spontaneously convert spells in the edition upgrade. Why are you questioning me?
I'm not questioning you. sorry if it seemed that way :smallredface:

[Mystic Muse]

so they were worried about fighters getting overpowered when they have druid and wizard spell lists.

what's the intelligence score on these people again?

guess that's something I should houserule in my eventual 3.5 campaign. that or nerf casters.

[Frosty]

so they were worried about fighters getting overpowered when they have druid and wizard spell lists.

what's the intelligence score on these people again?

guess that's something I should houserule in my eventual 3.5 campaign. that or nerf casters.

They are the WoTC. They think Playtest is a dirty word.

[Mystic Muse]

XD. unfortunately I bet that's true.

[Kaiyanwang]

There is something here and there to increase your crit chance.

See the cityscape web enhancement: an ACF of the barbarian increases the crit threat of 1, stacks with everything.

In BoVD, disciple of dispater has not been updated, so his critical threat increase stack, IMHO (even if is not for everybody become the minion of the lord of the second)

Sword and Fist and Oadv Weapon Master seemed updated by CW exotic weapon master, but there is a 3.5 enhancement in the mind eye with a psionic weapon master with similar rules. IIRC, both increase the threat of a weapon of election by 2.

In complete scoundrel, a lucky feats makes you treat a 1 as a natural 20, once/day. So, once day you mercurial greatsword threats 3/20 instead of 2/20. But this is not so useful, I guess :smalltongue:


Hope can be useful.


Edit: about H-orc: go directly orc, make a charger powerattack fighter//barbarian with the best ACF and wotc morons be damned.

[AstralFire]

so they were worried about fighters getting overpowered when they have druid and wizard spell lists.

what's the intelligence score on these people again?

To be fair:
Spell overhauls are a massive effort and the one thing I've never homebrewed from scratch in great quantity in D&D.
Due to the number of them, making large changes without providing a point by point guide to the changes makes it very likely that groups will miss things, which can make the whole thing feel like wasted effort.
Natural Spell + Wild Shape is not remotely broken if a player isn't the sort inclined to search a Monster Manual, which in my experience, many are not.
In fact, this is true of all of the upper levels of D&D -except- for Tome of Battle and Psionics; if you're inclined to play the class as it is presented to you that you should be playing it, your power is not out of control at all, and in fact tends to be underwhelming.
Their target audience will never be optimizers. I mean, sure, everyone tries at least a little bit to make their character competent, but optimizers are in many ways a nerd's nerd, and thus represent a small portion of the buying community.
Therefore - especially in a time when the internet was not quite as strongly felt in this market - it seemed more logical to make a game that is playable to the mechanically shallow. 'Pick a monster out of this book and BAM you're it!' is a lot cooler sounding than "add stats and roleplay it."
The core of the game was built with an 'extra layer' of power for spellcasters intended to come off as a bonus 'minigame' for optimizers. This extra layer is probably far more than what they intended, but the idea of a 'bonus' to the patient gamer is something that's both traditional to D&D (Wizards were always more powerful in the end) and something they were applying from their experiences with M:TG.

While I don't agree with the results in many ways, ultimately it's a statement about the importance about appearing balanced and interesting to the uninitiated and naive rather than actually being so, inasmuch as such things can be objectively determined. I know when I picked up 3.5 I went "ooh, my druid can actually do stuff now in case I prepared a bad spell. That's great! -stocks up on goodberries-."

[ZeroNumerous]

They are the WoTC. They think Playtest is a dirty word.

"Boy you be playtestin' me?"

"Man I'm gonna playtest the shiz outta that!"

"Playtestin' playtester! I'm gonna playtest you up!"

Anything's a dirty word with the right context. :smalltongue:

[Frosty]

"ooh, my druid can actually do stuff now in case I prepared a bad spell. That's great! -stocks up on goodberries-."

For some reason the last part of this quote amuses me to no end. :smallamused:

[daggaz]

To be fair:

Natural Spell + Wild Shape is not remotely broken if a player isn't the sort inclined to search a Monster Manual, which in my experience, many are not.
"

Sooooo for some reason, turning into a bear (which is often the first idea of even the greenest of druid players) and tossing out spells at the same time doesn't completely overpower straight melee classes HOW??

There are other issues I have with your "list," but I think pointing out the blatant wrongness on this point is enough.

As far as the OP and why they did it, I would go as far to say that it is a tad unbalancing at the lower levels, where it is entirely possible to roll up a keen masterwork weapon on the treasure charts. You then have a core melee character who can and will pretty much one shot any CR appropriate encounter without using some odd build and without taking any countering risks. Simply stack keen with improved critical, use a x3 or x4 crit weapon, and power attack like mad.

As well.. it kinda takes the flavor out of criticals if you are basically critting every time you roll higher than a five or whatnot. At high lvls, I wouldnt have any problem with it considering... but it does feel kinda cheap fluff wise, and as well, flat out tripling damage output like that hardly fixes all the problems with meleers -not to mention, clerics and the like will now be using the same trick as well.

[Eldan]

Actually, our first game went like this:

Player one: I'm gonna play a monk! They can hit people with fists!
Player two: Hmm... druids seem nice.
Player one: Yeah, but they are hippies and tree-huggers.
Player two: Right. Wizard, then.
Player three: I'm a Sorcerer! I get more spells than you do!
Player two: That's so unfair.

[AstralFire]

Sooooo for some reason, turning into a bear (which is often the first idea of even the greenest of druid players) and tossing out spells at the same time doesn't completely overpower straight melee classes HOW??

There are other issues I have with your "list," but I think pointing out the blatant wrongness on this point is enough.

You pointed out what blatant wrongness?

These things are broken and are elements of bad design. However, to someone not attempting to think like this, it is very possible to run a non-broken druid - many new players (not all, certainly) assume the druid should be standing back and healing and wild shape is a disguise, not an attack form. You have no idea the number of druids I've seen that run animal companions as pets and messengers, not combat sponges. The word 'druid' calls to mind different things for different people, and with only an 'okay' BAB, no metal armor, a weird weapon list, 9th level spells...? I think it's perfectly logical for an initiate to believe that they're not meant to be frontliners, and I believe this is what they had in mind that people would be doing.

I was trying to explain their thought processes as I understand them, which make a certain twisted amount of sense. This is very different from them going "YAR YAR!" and giving class abilities out at random, which a lot of people assume once they become familiar with the game mechanics. And it is counterintuitive to assume that anyone intentionally creates things in a game which are supposed to break its balance. So we should assume they had reasons for doing what they did; few people do anything really at random and I think it's useful for anyone interested in homebrewing and game design to try and analyze why 3.5 has the screw-ups it does and not just what the screw-ups are.

We have the benefit of a large community analyzing, breaking down, pointing out every single issue in perfect, crystal-clear shouts. There is little ground gained from continuing to explore the level of brokenness that can be achieved in the system. The lessons to be gained from analyzing how 3.x came to be so - how popularity of a system can often result from how interesting the system appears to the casual user and that contrariwise, that bad game design can occur when you don't think very far outside of what you intended something to do, in my opinion - bear repeating.

To me, it says you want to avoid making things balanced by hinging on things that are not immediately obvious. You should put in big, bold underline what your designs are capable of. And you should, of course, playtest and have other people playtest for you. Some with the big bold text and some without, to see what they come up with.

[daggaz]

Its not "remotely broken" is my main issue. The if clause you add in there does nothing to stop the brokenness. A player does not need to scour the monster manual to come up with the idea that they can turn into a bear. In fact, most players will come up with that one as one of their first ideas. That in itself is highly outbalancing melee classes. Toss in simultaneous full progression spellcasting which is both highly offensive and healing, and you have broken in its very definition so far as game balance is concerned.

You should probably just change your whole statement to "Natural spell + wildshape is not remotely broken IF the player goes out of their way to never use it in any of the combinations which are obviously and inherently broken, for example by never actually combining the two, or if so, by only doing so when out of combat." There, fixed that for ya.

As far as only the nerds' nest of gamers going for optimization... i find there is striking high number of people who are gamers who are also highly interested in the numerical mechanics of the systems which make up their games, especially when we are talking about DnD...

But anyhow, I gave my response to the actual OP so /hijack.

[AstralFire]

Its not "remotely broken" is my main issue. The if clause you add in there does nothing to stop the brokenness. A player does not need to scour the monster manual to come up with the idea that they can turn into a bear. In fact, most players will come up with that one as one of their first ideas. That in itself is highly outbalancing melee classes. Toss in simultaneous full progression spellcasting which is both highly offensive and healing, and you have broken in its very definition so far as game balance is concerned.

You should probably just change your whole statement to "Natural spell + wildshape is not remotely broken IF the player goes out of their way to never use it in any of the combinations which are obviously and inherently broken, for example by never actually combining the two, or if so, by only doing so when out of combat." There, fixed that for ya.

Wrong. I'm sorry, but... wrong. Yes, it occurred to you. Yes, it occurs to many people. But I know plenty of gamers who it didn't occur to; not everyone who wants to play a druid goes "I want to turn into a bear and maul things." Some people just do not have optimization mindsets at all naturally. I don't propose to make any knowledge of the ratios, but I've met enough of them to know that it can't be all that uncommon. If your average person turns into a bear once because he's getting beat on and proceeds to use his natural spell to cast down a bunch of flamestrikes because hey I'm a bear and I'm burning everything - awesome - he has not managed to pull off anything a straight spellcaster druid wouldn't have.

I've had druids who didn't even use Wild Shape because they didn't see the point in it. Note: I regularly draft new players for campaigns.


As far as only the nerds' nest of gamers going for optimization... i find there is striking high number of people who are gamers who are also highly interested in the numerical mechanics of the systems which make up their games, especially when we are talking about DnD...

At the time that 3.0/.5 was written, there was a much higher community stigma about number crunchers from what I'd gathered, just being a nerd on peripherally related things.

[Curmudgeon]

Read an article by Sean K. Reynolds (http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/rants/keenimprovedcritstacking.html) on the issue.

[bosssmiley]

just read the title.

Just read the SRD. :smalltongue:


They are the WoTC. They think Playtest is a dirty word.

I think it's a case of Liberal Arts majors on the writing staff deciding that "Math is hard!"

You can see exactly the same happening live and in real-time over at Paizo. :smallwink:


It's like a clown car of bad design. More stupid just keeps pouring out.

[daggaz]

Wrong. I'm sorry, but... wrong. Yes, it occurred to you. Yes, it occurs to many people. But I know plenty of gamers who it didn't occur to.......

lol... It occurs to many people. In and of itself, all by itself (and good luck getting a majority on this board not to agree with me on this point) the combination is broken or at least highly out of balance. So.... if many people do it... and all by itself that combination is broken... .ummm... so how IS IT NOT BROKEN AGAIN??! Just because you know "plenty of people" who dont use it in unbalancing ways, doesnt make it not broken.

Its like saying shooting a gun isnt inherently dangerous, because you never point it at people or cars, and neither do your friends.

[AstralFire]

lol... It occurs to many people. In and of itself, all by itself (and good luck getting a majority on this board not to agree with me on this point) the combination is broken or at least highly out of balance. So.... if many people do it... and all by itself that combination is broken... .ummm... so how IS IT NOT BROKEN AGAIN??! Just because you know "plenty of people" who dont use it in unbalancing ways, doesnt make it not broken.

Its like saying shooting a gun isnt inherently dangerous, because you never point it at people or cars, and neither do your friends.

Note that the entire segment is written from the standpoint of trying to understand why they did what they did. I've already said multiple times it's terrible game design. I am not calling this balanced, I am trying to understand why they thought it was balanced. I've already reiterated several times that it is overpowered. Stop trying to put words in my mouth. I can understand that my first post was worded unclearly, but I've now restated this often.

[Person_Man]

It's also worth mentioning that you can increase your critical threat range with the Psychic Weapon Master (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20020927a) and variant Barbarian (www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20070228a) in 3.5 D&D (and some 3.0 PrC as well, if you allow such things).

When you read a 3.5 book, forget about balance. Somebody gets an idea. They think "Wow, I wish I could roleplay this!" The come up with some rules to simulate it. Then they publish it. They assume that you the reader are smart enough to sort through it figure out what works and what doesn't work, and that if it doesn't work for your group then you won't use it. Sometimes this process yields gems (Expanded Psionics Handbook, Tome of Battle, PHBII, Magic of Incarnum) and sometimes its unworkable garbage (Complete Psionics, Tome of Magic, Miniatures Handbook). The goal of most authors is to write and get published, not create a perfect system in which we can simulate medieval fantasy themed combat. If you can do the latter while keeping it fun and interesting, please do so, and I will gladly buy and play your game.

[DragoonWraith]

Read an article by Sean K. Reynolds (http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/rants/keenimprovedcritstacking.html) on the issue.
This. The proper answer to this question is no - but they should.

[Sinfire Titan]

That's always bugged the crap outta me - especially compared to races like Neanderthal (Fr) and Skarn (MoI), who also get +2 STR... :smallfurious:

Don't take your anger out on the Skarn! They were made when WotC realized how pathetic some of their ideas were. The MoI and Bo9S are both post-WotC-idiocy stage.

[Kaiyanwang]

IMHO this

Psychic Weapon Master (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20020927a) a

can show that weapon master is 3.5 too, and Exotic Weapon master is not an update like wotc says in the website, but just another class.

Otherwise, shows like they don't even look at their own updates.

[AstralFire]

I will note that the Exotic Weapon Master in 3.5 is a much better designed class, but yeah, totally different design principles - bigger difference that Soulknife.

[Frosty]

I sort of like EWM, but I feel it needs just a *tad* more juice to be worth its prerequisites.

[Zherog]

As far as the OP and why they did it, I would go as far to say that it is a tad unbalancing at the lower levels, where it is entirely possible to roll up a keen masterwork weapon on the treasure charts.

No you can't. :smallwink: You'd have to have a +1 keen weapon, which is worth 8000 gp (plus the price of the masterwork weapon, of course.) There's a slim chance, of course, of getting a +2 equivalent weapon as a minor treasure; but it's more likely to get a +2 (or better) as a medium treasure.

Even if a +1 keen whatever got into a treasure pile at, say, 4th level I don't find that terribly broken.


You then have a core melee character who can and will pretty much one shot any CR appropriate encounter without using some odd build and without taking any countering risks. Simply stack keen with improved critical, use a x3 or x4 crit weapon, and power attack like mad.

I think this is a gross exaggeration, to be honest. Can they one-shot some challenges? Yes, if they get some lucky die rolls. Will they one-shot every single encounter? No, they won't.

Let's go +1 keen longsword. It'll have a crit range of 17-20. Let's give it to our 4th level fighter. He has, say, a 17 Strength and +4 BAB. His total to-hit is going to be +8, or +9 if he has Weapon Focus. Twenty percent of the time (whenever he rolls a 17 through 20) he'll threaten a critical, which he then needs to confirm.

Might he one-shot something? Yeah. So what? It's not going to be all the time. I'd say it'll even be less than 20% of the time.


As well.. it kinda takes the flavor out of criticals if you are basically critting every time you roll higher than a five or whatnot.

This is a fair argument, and as I recall it's the reason Andy and Co made the change when they converted to 3.5. They wanted to keep crits special, and this was their way of doing it - making them more rare.

[Myrmex]

You pointed out what blatant wrongness?

These things are broken and are elements of bad design. However, to someone not attempting to think like this, it is very possible to run a non-broken druid - many new players (not all, certainly) assume the druid should be standing back and healing and wild shape is a disguise, not an attack form. You have no idea the number of druids I've seen that run animal companions as pets and messengers, not combat sponges. The word 'druid' calls to mind different things for different people, and with only an 'okay' BAB, no metal armor, a weird weapon list, 9th level spells...? I think it's perfectly logical for an initiate to believe that they're not meant to be frontliners, and I believe this is what they had in mind that people would be doing.

I was trying to explain their thought processes as I understand them, which make a certain twisted amount of sense. This is very different from them going "YAR YAR!" and giving class abilities out at random, which a lot of people assume once they become familiar with the game mechanics. And it is counterintuitive to assume that anyone intentionally creates things in a game which are supposed to break its balance. So we should assume they had reasons for doing what they did; few people do anything really at random and I think it's useful for anyone interested in homebrewing and game design to try and analyze why 3.5 has the screw-ups it does and not just what the screw-ups are.

We have the benefit of a large community analyzing, breaking down, pointing out every single issue in perfect, crystal-clear shouts. There is little ground gained from continuing to explore the level of brokenness that can be achieved in the system. The lessons to be gained from analyzing how 3.x came to be so - how popularity of a system can often result from how interesting the system appears to the casual user and that contrariwise, that bad game design can occur when you don't think very far outside of what you intended something to do, in my opinion - bear repeating.

To me, it says you want to avoid making things balanced by hinging on things that are not immediately obvious. You should put in big, bold underline what your designs are capable of. And you should, of course, playtest and have other people playtest for you. Some with the big bold text and some without, to see what they come up with.

The first 3 people I played with who played druid either didn't use wildshape, or used their spells for BC and blasting, using wildshape to basically stay as a mobile spellcaster. None were very effective.

[Thurbane]

Don't take your anger out on the Skarn! They were made when WotC realized how pathetic some of their ideas were. The MoI and Bo9S are both post-WotC-idiocy stage.
True, but it stiall annoys me that one of my favorite races gets so completely hosed in order to make up for this "overpowering +2 STR" they have, yet they give the same bonus out to newer races like candy. :smallfrown:

[Sinfire Titan]

True, but it stiall annoys me that one of my favorite races gets so completely hosed in order to make up for this "overpowering +2 STR" they have, yet they give the same bonus out to newer races like candy. :smallfrown:

That's a problem with Core design, not newer splat books. Skarn/Rilkan kick ass in flavor too.

[AstralFire]

I'm with Thurbane here, half-orcs are totally awesome. I don't like those weird things in that book.

[Sinfire Titan]

I'm with Thurbane here, half-orcs are totally awesome. I don't like those weird things in that book.

Dusklings were the only thing that threw me off. Azurin are decent, and the Skarn/Rilkan have an awesome background.

But to each his own. The fact remains that Core races are largely unbalanced because the Devs didn't understand their own system. This is evident in the playtest characters (a Druid with Weapon Focus: Short Spear?).

[ericgrau]

Actually if you have both improved crit and keen then it makes the enhancement bonus weapon enchantments and the burst weapon enchantments too strong. That's probably why they removed the stacking. It's also the same reason a lot of other things don't stack. Sure, you could probably let 1 or 2 things stack without a huge increase in power, but that's fairly lame to expect the players to know the special trick rather than just applying a blanket boost to everyone. And if you let lots of things stack, things will get out of hand fast. And no, just because they're not casters doesn't make it okay to break them.